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Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...

Asked by Rick Rubin to compare himself to Alan Moore, Frank Miller says Moore's work was an autopsy on the superhero and his own was an attempted resurrection. Two creators in the same moment, and neither tried to talk the other out of it. I see creating as an act of love, so the part when Miller talks about tearing up over a line he wrote in the context of crafting a story - it sounds exactly right to me.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Miller on why there's no algorithm for this

"...the beauty in what we all do is chaos. The accident, the thing that's not supposed to happen but works anyway."

Carrie Brownstein explains how Thunder Ant started, before it was a TV show, as a question about who she wanted to keep hanging out with, and I wrote it in my notes on the spot. It's Jim Collins's "right people on the bus" said by someone who formed a band instead of a company. My 2017-ish re-read of Good to Great shows I was trying to fix the wrong bus. Carrie and Fred Armisen built their own bus with Portlandia and I am so here for the back stories.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Carrie Brownstein on how Thunder Ant (Portlandia’s original name) started

"Who are people I want to be around? Who are people who I respect and admire and I gain inspiration from?"

Three chords, a list of stuff happening in Nowheresville, and my first reaction to "Check It Out" was lazy lyrics. Joseph calls it a trainspotting exercise of suburban life, and the F chord that doesn't belong in G makes you feel the distance from home before anyone explains it. But maybe what I'm still thinking about the most after this Cultish Creative Music Club episode is how humanizing this song is when you understand a little more about Mellencamp's own journey, seeing all that life, only to move back to Belmont, Indiana.

Quote from the Personal Archive - my take after we pressed stop on the episode

I think he had to go through all of it, the wives, the kids, the girlfriends, the tours, the success, to be ready to write and record a song like this.

"Be kind, rewind" came with a little marketing and a lot of philosophy from my youth, and there's no "Be mean, unwind" to go with it. In markets-speak, nothing good ever unwinds: positions, trades, and leverage all do it, and everybody gets nervous when the un- comes out. Corporate strategy has the same quirk with bundling and unbundling, where both get called progress, so it all just sounds cyclical to me.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on what comes after the unwind

Let it break. Let it unwind. Let it crash... Then let something else rise in its wake.

A charity 90s trivia night, a stray Pinky and the Brain reference, and suddenly I stopped everything to ask whether antics and semantics are somehow related. My theories sounded plausible, which is exactly the problem. We also lost trivia night, but finished solidly mid-table and our friends won steaks in the meat raffle (which, talk about an A+ raffle idea! god bless PA).

Quote from the Personal Archive - on theorizing before you look it up

You want to be as wrong as possible, if possible, to stay humble in life.

Jack Boudreau opens a blog post with "just a low hum," and I felt seen right away, since I remember wondering in my freshman dorm when and how anyone got any work done. You only ever see some of the people some of the time, so I keep adding the context back in until the one data point I'm obsessing over gets appropriately diluted. Probably you too, if you're reading this. We pick the rulers we hold up, so choose them with care.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Jack Boudreau on the checklist nobody can finish

You're not behind. You've just been trying to finish a list that was never written for one person to finish.

Morgan Ranstrom flipped the chair on me for Morgan on Purpose, so I got to be the guest for 32 minutes instead of the interviewer. We got into the music years, the burnout, the awkward stretch where I thought "growing up" meant leaving the creative part behind, and how it all ended up in the same career. It's this week's whole conversation out loud, and I'm still figuring out how much of my own advice I follow.

Where creativity meets career with Matt Zeigler

Chris Davis (Davis Funds, Board of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca Cola, etc.!) joined Robert Hagstrom, Bogumił Baranowski and me for a special 100 Year Thinkers conversation, and Chris says the biggest mistake with a great business is selling it, trimming because it looks expensive until you're cutting your flowers and watering your weeds. His story about a small early decision that a rigid rule would have ruled out is the one I can't shake. His closing sermon on the fear of lagging, with a Saul Bellow assist, lands on the same nerve as Jack Boudreau's low hum. And yes, I'm absolutely taking "don't get chalk on your shoes" as a catchphrase.

Then Justin Carbonneau and I sat down with Michael Baron of Baron Capital, whose firm has beaten every US stock fund since 2003. He makes the case that some of the software companies the market fears AI will wipe out are actually sitting on proprietary data, and he closes with what Ron Baron taught him about curiosity and doing the primary research yourself. Michael's view is that AI raises the value of investment judgment, which pairs nicely with Frank Miller's point from above that the real work still comes from inside a person.

Also this week on Excess Returns: Last Call, where Jack Forehand and I cover the 10-year at a 24-year high with Andy Constan, Brent Kochuba and Eric Pachman, and the Weekly Wrap, where we revisit Michael Baron on AI losers the market may have wrong, Eric Pachman on diesel working its way into inflation, and Kris Abdelmessih on why bet size decides whether you survive your edge. And Katie Stockton joined Justin Carbonneau and me on why she still sees a bull market.

Different rooms, same question I keep landing on all week: who are you building with, and what are you bringing from the inside?

Write down a creative accident from your own life, something that wasn't supposed to work but did, and describe what it taught you.

WHAT WORK ARE YOU MAKING RIGHT NOW THAT ONLY YOU COULD TAKE OUT TO SHARE?

Think about the people you want to keep hanging out with and make something with. Who is on that list, and what could you build together?

WHICH BUS ARE YOU ON TODAY, AND WHO IS DRIVING IT?

Name one imaginary checklist you've been holding yourself against. Write down the context you've been leaving out of the picture.

WHAT IS READY TO UNWIND IN YOUR LIFE, AND WHAT MIGHT RISE IN ITS WAKE?

Pick a song, a place, or a person that looked simple at first glance and write about what you see in it now that you know more of the story.

As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections in your own Personal Archive.

(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)

ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules